Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Standing ovation and 3 cheers for Texas state senator Wendy Davis (Democrat), who last night spoke for more than 10 hours, a filibuster attempt in a bid to run out the voting window on a bill which would have banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and required all clinics to be graded as surgical centers, with all doctors required to have admitting privileges at hospitals, due to which most of the state's clinics wouldn't have been able to meet the new standards. Her attempt stalled about two hours ahead of the deadline over a complaint that she had violated rules. The Republican-controlled Senate then began voting on the bill, amid protests from spectators. Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst (Republican), after meeting with lawmakers, said some of their votes came in after midnight local time (0500 GMT), the effective end of the 30-day special session. He blamed the "unruly mob" at the capitol, according to the Dallas Morning News. (Three cheers for the "unruly mob" too!) Governor Rick "Oops" Perry could still revive the proposal by calling the legislature into a new special session. HERE.

BUT

Sarcastic slow hand clap for SCOTUS and especially for Chief Justice Roberts (Sun Aquarius, 27 Jan. like me) who should know better, for invalidating part of the Voting Rights Act, thus allowing several pieces of legislation in the states, designed to make voting more difficult for minorities, stalled by Section 4 of the Act 'til now, to go through unhindered - until Congress writes a new Section 4 (could be never!)HERE.

Oh my! So, let's talk of other things...."shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings", and extra-terrestrials:

I can't now remember which online article set me on a search - a wild goose chase for information on Fermi's Paradox (aka "Where are They?"). Whatever I'd been reading must have been about the likelihood of contact from extra-terrestrial civilisations. (Illustration: h/t to William M. Briggs )

The story goes that, one day back on the 1940's, a group of atomic scientists, including the famous Enrico Fermi, were sitting around talking, when the subject turned to extraterrestrial life. Fermi is supposed to have then asked, "So? Where is everybody?" What he meant was: If there are all these billions of planets in the universe that are capable of supporting life, and millions of intelligent species out there, then how come none has visited earth?

For anyone who holds the belief that "there is something" in astrology, in its most basic premise anyway, a whole different set of questions arises in addition to "where are they?" Fermi's Paradox really proves the height of human hubris: based on the assumption that alien life forms will be similar to us in desires, aims, broad personality traits, similar technological advances, and ability, or wish, to be communicative, and communicative in some way we'd appreciate and associate with what we know as communication.

From Wikipedia's page on Fermi's Paradox this explanation for the non-communication, so far, came the closest to my own feelings:

They are too alien

Another possibility is that human theoreticians have underestimated how much alien life might differ from that on Earth. Aliens may be psychologically unwilling to attempt to communicate with human beings. Perhaps human mathematics is parochial to Earth and not shared by other life, though others argue this can only apply to abstract math since the math associated with physics must be similar (in results, if not in methods.)

Physiology might also cause a communication barrier. In Contact, Carl Sagan briefly speculated that an alien species might have a thought process orders of magnitude slower (or faster) than humans. Such a species could conceivably speak so slowly that it requires years to say even a simple phrase like "Hello". A message broadcast by that species might well seem like random background noise to humans, and therefore go undetected.

Scientists routinely ignore astrology, of course. The vast majority of 'em look on astrology as absolute rubbish or ignorant superstition. I don't accept, wholesale, what astrology textbooks set out either, I believe there is some rubbish to be found there, a fact which has done the reputation of astrology no good at all. But I believe that there is something in astrology's basic premise.

At one of my favourite websites on the net The Library of Halexandria Dr. Dan Sewell Ward quotes Arthur M. Young on Astrology, and mainstream science’s inability to come to grips with it. the whole extract is great stuff, here's the part I want to highlight:

“..........So I must take the gods and their correlation with the planets on faith. Let us see what this faith entails.

“I . That the solar system is an organon.

“II. That the organon is ‘a process machine’ having a number of distinct periodicities or rhythms.

“III. That said rhythms are indicated by the planets.

“IV. That the direction in which planets ‘point’ at any given time indicates, or creates, the zeitgeist of that time.

“V. That the pointing of the planets produces such zeitgeist because the directions are themselves different in quality.

“VI. That the planets, because of their difference of period, contribute to the different powers of persons.

“VII. That a person’s birth is an introduction into this organon. A birth is an enrollment, as it were, to ‘take a course in the universe.’ The birth establishes the central stance. The motion of the planets thereafter" establishes the scenario.”

For the sake of argument, even if a passing reader be a devout non-believer in astrology, just assume for a moment that there is some validity in the ancient doctrine's basic premise. If life has arisen on another planet, either in our own Milky Way galaxy, or in another galaxy far, far away, planetary components, in relation to position of the Sun (or a star in place of our Sun in another galaxy) will be very different from what we experience on Earth. Life forms, even if vaguely comparable to humans physically, would be psychologically different, in ways we cannot even begin to contemplate, because our Earth-bound minds are just that: "bound" - unable to stretch.

I looked around the net to discover whether any brave astrologer had tackled this topic head-on. The only examples touching on this, even obliquely, I was able to find were: HERE

"• First you have to deal with a larger question: What happens to astrology if humans colonize space?
• And, of course, does astrology even make sense for fictional characters and stories?
• Another consideration is whether or not our science fiction tales reflect an astrological zeitgeist?"

Our Earth-bound minds are shackled to narrow perceptions, on every issue.

The more I think about this, the more I believe that expecting communication from extra-terrestrial living beings has to be a lost cause. A passing reader might consider it strange that I chose that particular photograph as my overall blog header: The Very Large Array in New Mexico. It's a daily reminder of an exciting trip there, and it proves one thing about Earthlings, myself included of course: we live in hope.

8 comments:

mike
said...

Reading your commentary regarding alien communication reminds me of the many PBS programs that have addressed whether animals have emotions, intelligence, and are able to communicate with humans...yes, to all three aspects. It's been scientifically proven that animals are able to intelligently construct cursory sentences to convey thought processes and emotions, once trained by humans to do so. One particular program on NOVA addressing the ability of animals to communicate with humans was quick to assess the fact that we humans force these animals to communicate in a fashion acceptable to us humans, but humans have yet to be able to directly communicate with an animal using an animal's language! Who's smarter?

Humans have an arrogance that precludes our ability to understand that we are one of the many species on earth and that the earth, itself, may be the ultimate intelligence over-seeing all species. We pre-empt possibility with our perverse superiority and narrow range of acceptable responses.

Perhaps alien life is in constant contact with species on earth, but humans are simply too pre-occupied (dense!) to hear or interpret the communication. Perhaps the alien form of communication is not at all what we perceive communication to be, hence, it goes right by us. Maybe the communication is as the gurus have said all along, stop the brain chatter by meditating...maybe tuning-in to the universe is the message.

Edgar Cayce states that Arcturians are the highest civilization in our galaxy. They are of a spiritual plane that transcends our concepts. Cayce claims communication does occur through human dream states. We have no true means of assessing our dreams' contents, except in our awake and conscious state...we are forced to interpret non-conscious events in a conscious fashion that may be devoid of actual meaning due to the interpretation through our conscious 3D earth reality.

I have acquainted myself with heliocentric astrology and find it very workable. It is essentially identical to geocentric, but without Earth's Moon and Nodes, no retrograde planets, and most planets are in a different position due to the view from the Sun and not Earth. In the geocentric chart, it would be said that the Sun just entered tropical Cancer. In the heliocentric chart, the Earth just entered tropical Capricorn. So, if humans traverse our solar system, heliocentric astrology still works. We can wonder what astrological system to use once we have traveled to the edge of our solar system...maybe we never will reach beyond that point.

There has been much talk of space travel through "worm holes". Travel of this type tends to negate our concept of time and space and puts us in a whole new realm.

I am a fan of fractal mathematics. Fractals are repeating patterns that display homogeneity from the smallest piece to the largest portions. Fractals have an uncanny ability to mathematically represent everything in the natural world. Each human has fractal counterparts from our genetic code, to the ability to use cloning to re-create the entire body, to studying one human to determine huge groups of humans. Perhaps this applies to astrology, as well, and the astrology we practice now will be replaced by fractal astrology, which won't require a place or time of birth. Remember Einstein's law of relativity...time and place is dependent on the observer and observed. Time of birth in outer space traveling warp speed takes-on a different time and position characteristic than that observed from the Earth.

Yes, a standing ovation for sure for Wendy Davis and her disruptive supporters that were present on the floor to push the vote past the bewitching hour! Kudos! Job very well done!____________________

I'm always glad when SCOTUS makes a decision that I favor, but it's becoming more infrequent now-a-days. Even when they make a decision I endorse, it may have caveats or odd elements attached. SCOTUS seriously lost me when the decision was made to consider corporations as individuals. I lost my warm feeling for SCOTUS at that time.

Your mention of animal (and bird?)language or mode of communication could well be very close to what we'd find if ever we do encounter beings from outside of Earth. Though, I suppose, if they'd attained the level of technology and skills to reach us, either physically or mentally, they'd also have sussed out a way of making us understand them.

All we can do is surmise on this. "Seers" such as Cayce had some interesting ideas, I do feel wary of most of them though.

Good point about heliocentric astrology. I have read a little about it but didn't go very deeply into it.

On different "arms" of our galaxy things astrological would have to "work" differently, with some of the same ingredients I guess. But I can't get my head around that - far too Earth-bound. :-)

Fractals, too, are beyond my understanding, but fascinating, even from my ignorant perspective.

................

We'll see how long before a) Gov. Perry brings back the abortion bill for another try; and b) how long before Congress get around to re-writing Section 4 of the VRA.Betcha 1) will be soonest and 2) will be impeded by many dragging feet. ;-(

Still, the unruly mob of Texans did a good job last night. Now...if only unruly mobs from every state would join together to demand the repeal of of Scotus's Citizens United decision.....

Vanilla Rose ~~ Wow! That's amazing - thanks for the link - I hadn't read of this before - though I've seen several large communities of prairie dogs in this part of the USA. They tend to live in "cities", known as (unsurprisingly) Prairie Dog Cities.There's a big one in a neighbouring town to us, it grew so big that the authorities wanted to clear it out either by moving the wee animals elsewhere or getting rid of them in worse ways. Human citizens protested so long and loudly that the plans to get rid of the P D City had to be cancelled. :-)

Pisces Weekly Horoscope ~ While I appreciate your thanks, and don't mind any commenter using my blog to advertise their own, as long as the comment adds something to the post in question. It'd be nice if your comment did add thoughts and information - or something - to the post.

I'll not treat this, and your other comment today, as "spam" and delete them today, but will do so in future if advertising appears to be your only aim.

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About Me

Also answers to Ann or Annie or even Twilight Annie (sounds like a character from Dickens - or Damon Runyan!)
British-born, living in the USA since 2004, US citizen since 2008.
Self-taught non-professional dabbler in astrology, which took up most of the blog-space here from Aug. 2006 to Aug. 2012. The blog now covers more general topics, along with occasional astrology- related posts. Archives can be accessed easily via links in the sidebar.